


Something Magnificent

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Happy Birthday Fitz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 09:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11894502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe... It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.- Carl Sagan.A look at 5 vignettes through Fitz's life, from the known past to the near future, and at what space and the picture of space meant to him as he learnt, grew and changed.





	Something Magnificent

**Author's Note:**

> for The FitzSimmons' Network Engineering vs Biochem challenge, Team Engineering's Fitz Wish List, celebrating Fitz's birthday! It gets a little angsty in the middle but it's fluffy on either end, so enjoy!
> 
> (ps - I know there's probably already like 500 FS fics called 'something magnificent' but shhhh)

_i –_  

Despite all the troubles in his household of late, ten-year-old Leo Fitz was still young enough that Christmas was a snow-shrouded wonderland of peace, happiness and joy. In socked feet, he raced across the cold wood floors to the carpeted lounge and dived for the tree, thrilled by mystery, excitement, and the sense of reward that came from tearing the packaging off his gifts. 

This particular Christmas, his father was absent, but his mother was side-stepping through a litter of toys to bring them each a cup of hot chocolate. As always, she was there for him – although, today, she pressed her lips closed, her smile disappearing for a moment as Fitz ripped open the biggest package at the back, and cried out in delight. 

“Mum!” he yelped, because of course he assumed that she had not yet seen it. “It’s space! Look, look, it’s the Milky Way –“ 

He stumbled, trying to drag the relatively large frame over toward her. She picked it up to help, and a letter slipped out from where it had been wedged into the back of the frame. Fitz saw it straight away, his eyes caught by the movement, and scooped it up with a curious frown. His mother already knew what it held, but held her tongue as he read out the words.

_Dear Leo,_

_I am sorry to tell you that I was unable to arrange for you to go to Space Camp with the older boys and girls next year. I hope you will accept this picture for your wall as a placeholder and a promise that I will do my best to get it for you next Christmas instead. Also, remember that sometimes things do not always work out how we might want them to, but might come to us in unexpected ways._

_Merry Christmas.  
_ _Love, Santa._

Fitz frowned down at the page. Sadness and anger flooded through him briefly but he stayed still, letting the tears fill his eyes and repeating to himself that it was important to stay still and not throw things when he was mad. Especially when people meant well. He didn’t want to be ungrateful, even though he was. 

His mother pulled Fitz in for a hug, and took the paper from between his fingers so that he’d focus on her instead. 

“I’m sorry, love,” she murmured. “How about we go out to the hill this weekend and you can tell me some of the things you know about space?” 

“Okay,” Fitz agreed reluctantly. 

“This is a nice picture too, isn’t it?” his mother reminded him. “And I know just where to put it. Just by your door there, don’t you think? Then you can always look at it and remember where you want your life to go.” 

“I want to go to space,” Fitz declared.

“Do you want to be an astronaut?” his mother asked. 

“Hmm.” Fitz pouted thoughtfully. “No.” 

Apparently satisfied with that answer, Fitz cast his eyes to the next package, which turned out to be a kit for the assembly of a clockwork spider. Proud and confused – which was a common combination when it came to her son – Fitz’s mother settled for watching him play, and trying to follow along with the instructions while Fitz tipped out the box’s content and raced ahead with the construction, free-hand. 

\--

_ii –_

The dormitory was small, but its paint and bed linen were fresh and it smelled, if a little dusty, like success. Fitz beamed as he set his bag down inside the door. It was nothing special to look at, but he was a poor boy from Scotland with a fistful of the biggest burrito he had ever seen, and an MIT acceptance letter burning a hole in his backpack. He felt more special and more proud than he could remember feeling in his life. And it helped that, as the youngest student here by a good few years, he had this room all to himself. 

(It helped even more, the privacy, when the pride faded and he realised that while he’d never made it to Space Camp, the United States felt just as far from home. He and his mother had scraped together every penny they could muster to get him here. There was no going back. There was probably no seeing his mother again either, not before he started earning real money – and who knew how long that would take). 

Gangly, baby-faced teenage Fitz curled up on his bed and cried for a while, as all of that sunk in - but then he remembered the picture of space. Blessings in unexpected places. A reminder of where he wanted his life to be going. And now, a piece of home that he could carry with him into the unknown. He took a deep breath, and unfurled to look for it. 

His suitcase had been brought in already, by a well-meaning RA. It sat in the corner waiting for him. The picture of space was rolled up in a cardboard container inside, with its frame carefully deconstructed to save space. With love, and meticulous care, Fitz put his precious picture back together and searched for the best place around the room that he could keep it. In the end, since he was not allowed to screw or stick anything to the walls themselves, he settled for propping it on top of a low bookshelf, where he could see it well from the kitchenette if not the bed. He leaned back against the small bench and smiled at it. The room was barely two meters wide, and everything in it was a kettle, a picture of space, two small bags and a small boy, but it was his, and it was him, and here they all were. 

“One day,” he said, turning the words over on his tongue and in his mind. “I’m going to go to space.” 

It had been a strange, abstract dream of his, ever since he was a kid. Now he was living in the hallowed halls walked by some of the greatest minds the world had ever seen. Maybe he was foreign, maybe he was young, but something about him belonged here. Something about him was taking the first steps to turning his abstraction into a reality. Maybe he wouldn’t go to space after all – he was scared of heights, and was not a fan of high G-forces or terrible food – but maybe he could send a part of himself. A piece of his work: a rocket, or a satellite, or a space station. 

The possibilities seemed endless, now that he was on his way. 

\--

 _iii -_  

“Have you seen – have you seen my – “ 

Fitz turned this way and that, but most of the others had been taught to ignore him. His hands flapped desperately, stress and exasperation rising and rising at the ceaseless movement and invisible words around him. He tried to gesture what he meant, but a square could mean anything. Where was his – why were they touching his things? Where were they going? Where was space? Space! The picture of space. That’s what it was called. Picture, picture. 

“This one?” Skye offered it to him like a treat to distract a dog, but it worked. She was a familiar voice in an unfamiliar sea, and for once, her eyes were keenly focused on him. Bright and shining, hopeful – perhaps a little too hopeful, putting on a show for him - but curse it, it worked. Fitz noticed her body unclench with relief as he took the picture from her, and she led him away from the crowd of technicians and troops, who were marching all of their belongings out of the Bus in endless streams. 

Hugging the picture of space to himself as best he could, Fitz whined. 

“Why?” 

“Well, we live here now,” Skye explained, gesturing around the base. “It would be silly to go all the way in there and back out again every time you wanted to go to your room, wouldn’t it?” 

 _I’m not five,_ he wanted to remind her, but there were so many more important things. Like why, and why, and why had Jemma left and not taken her things and not said goodbye and not been here to build their lab and fill it how she liked and why did everything hurt? And why, and why, and why?

 _“Why.”_  

He whispered it this time, and Skye thought he must mean something that she did not understand. She pursed her lips. Should she move away? 

“I’m sorry, Fitz,” she said, hating that neither of them could find the words when they needed them most. “This is how it is now. But it’ll be okay.” 

Fitz took a deep breath and looked down at the picture of space. Usually, it brought light to his dark thoughts, expanded his mind, helped him to see his own possibilities. Now all he saw was a fading canvas, purchased years ago by a well-intentioned but under-resourced single mother who had thrown everything she could into making her son’s dreams come true, and he’d wasted that. He’d wasted his possibilities by trusting someone who should not have been trusted, and by going and getting himself blown up, so that his brain stopped working and everyone stopped listening and he’d never get anywhere now. He’d stalled mid-flight and was falling backwards, and there was nothing he, or anyone, could do to stop it.

“Hey, Fitz?” this time, it was genuine concern in Skye’s voice. Real softness, real heart, for the friend she’d once known. “Are you alright? Do you want some help?” 

“You can’t help me,” Fitz growled, and before Skye could think of how to react, he stormed off to the room they’d given him, and shoved the canvas into that thin gap between the desk and the wall. Like him, it was worthless now. A faded, battered, hollow version of itself. It deserved to go unseen, unheard, and as far as he was concerned, it could rot in the dust and darkness forever. 

\--

 _iv -_  

Fortunately, the cosmos had other plans for Fitz and his picture of space. He found new friends, and a new sense of self. A new set of possibilities. He was different now, and didn’t want all of the same things he once had, but not because he felt like he didn’t deserve them. He simply had to accept how much he’d changed now, not just since the Pod, but over the course of his whole life. His eyes were not set to the stars anymore but rather, on the things that rained down from said stars every day. He wanted to help – people, Shield, the planet, the world - space or no. And so the picture became, to him, a symbol of the expansion of the mind. Of discovery. Of aspiration. He pulled it out of hiding and it presided over the steps he took toward other dreams in his life. 

Like toward Jemma. 

She’d always liked space, even more than he had. She’d continued with stargazing and constellation studies into adulthood, and still kept up with news from NASA and the Bureau of Meteorology in what spare time she had. She’d even had a go at studying solar and stellar patterns on Maveth and that, Fitz thought, was dedication. Plus, he still liked to think of her as a light in the darkness of his life. Perhaps not his only light – that he’d had to realise the hard way – but a light nonetheless; radiant and inspirational and breathtaking. She was his star. 

(Funny, he thought, the way these things lined up.) 

And they’d sat before the picture of space any number of times before. It had hung above the television in their shared flat during their Academy years. It had been propped up in a bookshelf on the Bus that had become filled with mementos of Peru and Beijing and Manila and them, them, them expanding their horizons together, just as Jemma had promised. It had been hidden when she had gone, and it had risen again in time for her return, and now it shone its wisdom and blessings down upon them and Fitz bumbled over the many ways he’d failed to tell her how he’d felt, and she kissed him. She kissed him with a smile on her lips, and a promise in her hands and her eyes and her heart, that this time she was here to stay. That here, now, this was their best first kiss. Their real first kiss. The start of something. 

(“Though I suppose you have been to space now after all, haven’t you?” Jemma pointed out not long after this, and elbowed Fitz playfully. Fitz frowned at the fading canvas, as if studying it carefully, and then turned a sappy smile on Jemma. 

“Didn’t do much for me, to be honest,” he replied. “I’ve got everything I need right here on the ground.” 

Jemma rolled her eyes, but for the rest of the night they worked with their hands linked together under the sheets of the bed they shared).

_\--_

_v –_  

_“… Happy Birthday to you!”_

Obligingly, Fitz leaned forward and blew out the candles. The audience applauded and snapped their pictures, and cheered; _Happy Birthday-slash-housewarming!_ But it was Jemma who stepped up for the first gift-giving.

Her parcel was long and tall and laid flat, and Fitz frowned at it curiously. Today was not Fitz’s actual birthday; that day, Jemma had already blocked out with him to go somewhere special. Anywhere away from here, he’d assumed. He hadn’t been expecting a second gift from her, especially not with the costs of moving on their minds (and wallets). Perhaps it was a gag gift? If so, the mature plain-silver wrapping was a little misleading. 

The sound of Elena’s huff of amused frustration alerted Fitz to the fact that he was taking his sweet time to open the present. He smiled at her and Mack, and ripped the paper obligingly, and then his jaw dropped at the beauty of the picture frame beneath. It was not a gag gift at all, but a wedding photo. Was it one of the professionals? He couldn’t remember having it taken, but it certainly looked the part.

It was a beach scene. At night; calm dark water reflected the stars above and around them. Two figures sat on the end of a jetty, their feet dangling over the edge, looking out over the ocean: one being himself, and the other Jemma, in her wedding dress, leaning against him as the long day and the chill of the evening sunk in. They’d been eating chips, if he remembered correctly. 

“Okay everybody, party’s over,” Daisy declared, choking up a little. “Jemma wins the gift game, thanks for your entries but it looks like we can all go home.” 

“No, no,” Fitz shook his head, and wiped his eyes just in case he had teared up too. “It’s beautiful Jemma. I love you.” 

“I thought it was a bit of a risk,” she confessed. “I thought it could hang above the mantle or… maybe by the dresser? But I didn’t want you to think I was trying to replace… “ 

He shook his head again. “Jemma, it’s _perfect_.” 

For a moment, everyone in the room disappeared but the two of them. They kissed; a soft and sweet and lingering kiss that made the world seem to spin around them. When they parted, it was to smiles and admiration, and even tears in the eyes of a few onlookers. Coulson raised his glass of champagne in a toast to them. 

“I couldn’t be prouder of these two,” he declared. “And I couldn’t be happier that through all that they have endured, these fine young agents came out the other side to be here today. So even though the Daisy in me is telling me to say ‘get a room’, I’m reminded that well… they have, and that’s why we’re here. So, happy birthday-slash-housewarming, FitzSimmonses, and – hey, I couldn’t get the moon to shine just right on a Kodak moment, but I did get you one of those fancy blender things, and hopefully that’s pretty close.” 

He gestured to a large, irregularly-shaped contraption that was very conspicuously wrapped, and Fitz and Simmons laughed along with the crowd. The gifts that came down the line after that were somewhat more mundane, but they received each with joy and gratitude. Just like the original picture of space, Fitz thought, Jemma’s represented a galaxy of love and commitment and opportunities in his life that was only possible because of everybody who was here today. Though a humble toaster and a spanner and an iron didn’t seem like much on their own, his friends were helping him build a life with a woman he loved, and really, he couldn’t have dreamt of anything better.


End file.
